Africana Studies 351 - Sex, Race, and the Visual

This course examines categories of race, gender, sex, and sexuality through the lens of the visual. Using contemporary literature, photography, performance art, film, and theories of the visual, our task is to investigate the import and utility of embodiment. How do race, gender, and sexuality function in the artistic imaginary? What can we glean from cultural productions that engage the viewer/reader in ways that challenge ideas about conformity, fluidity, belonging, and self-reflection? More than a linear literary or theoretical trajectory, this course will provide a template for all the mechanisms of the visual -- psychological and ocular, interpretive, rhetorical and performative.

Prereq: English 200.